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Time Frame For Results

By: Julia Hall When you start a program, it is often asked, "well, how long will this take me to get into shape?". That is a very difficult question to answer from a personal trainer's perspective, because there are so many variables that come into play here, but I will try and give you some guidelines.

If you've been sedentary a very long time and are just starting to train, it's important to realize that your body changes from the inside out. It is my theory that most people fall off of their training programs between the first and third months, because they don't see anything happening physically on the outside by looking in the mirror. But the changes are going on, they're just happening within your body and you can't see them yet.

I often tell people to take what I call the touch test, which means that you're going to just literally squeeze your arms and legs with your hand and feel what your musculature feels like before you start a program, and as you are going into your first and second and third weeks, do it again, and a month down the road, do it again, and two months, again, because what you are going to feel is the musculature getting more and more firm.

The reason you are feeling that firmness occur is because your fat is stored in different ways in your body. The first place it is stored, actually, is in your muscles. It is marbled throughout your musculature. It is also stored between your musculature and your skin; we call that the subcutaneous fat. That's the fat you can see in the mirror, but it's not the first fat to be used for fuel when you start to train the body. That is why, when you're first starting to train, you don't see it on the outside very much, because the intramuscular fat is the first fat to be burned, and that takes a little time. For some people, it can take as much as 8-10 weeks for that process to be completed. If you have been training and you are fairly lean to start with, you are going to see this change in your body much more readily.

Now, as you go into your program over the weeks, there are a lot of things that are going to be happening. Muscle weighs 5 times more than fat, and as your body begins to grow muscle, then you can actually see the scale go up a little bit. Not to worry, it will begin to go the other direction fairly shortly, but it is common to see the scale go up a little bit as you are growing some muscle back. As your body loses fat, of course, that scale will begin to drop.

You are born with all the muscle fiber you are ever going to have. Muscle fiber isn't transformed into fat or fat into muscle. They are 2 completely different kinds of cells and never do the 2 exchange places. You are born with all the fats cells you are going to have, unless you reach what we call morbid obesity, which is about 50% of your body comprised of fat. At that point, your body will produce more fat cells to have more room to store. If you've never reached a body comp of 50% fat, then you are still using all the fat cells that you were born with, they simply grow larger or shrink, as do your muscle cells. When muscle cells grow, we call that hypertrophy. When muscle cells shrink, we call that atrophy. If you have not been doing any resistance training, your muscles have atrophied, they have shrunk. And as they shrink, you become softer and less strong, less energetic, and most importantly, your metabolism wanes, it drops and it slows. Your metabolism is dictated by your musculature. The healthier and more fit and more strong we can make your musculature, the better your metabolism will be; the more efficient it will be at burning the calories that you take in. It is really important to know that you will never, ever reach a point where you cannot regain muscle strength. Until they bury us, our muscles are capable of gaining strength back. So, there is never a "too-late"; it is never too late to get into shape.

When you have burned off all the intramuscular fat and your body is now using your subcutaneous fat for fuel, this is where you really begin to see changes in the mirror, and the inches will begin to drop in terms of your measurements.

Muscle becomes more and more dense as it gets strong, particularly in females. You do not have to be concerned about bulking up and gaining size. Unless you have an unusual amount of testosterone, you will not have any problem with getting larger as you get stronger. Males automatically do grow larger as they get stronger, and that, too, depends on how much testosterone they have. Some grow larger faster because they have more testosterone.

Muscles are always going to grow in density as they get stronger, however. The fat, of course, is burned out completely, and they become more and more dense or firm. Once the subcutaneous fat is burned off, you should be at a really good body composition. Women typically are healthiest between 18 and 25% body fat. Men are healthiest between 12 and 20% body fat. At these levels, you should feel wonderful. Your energy should be excellent. You could work all day and dance all night! Clothes should be fitting the way you want them to fit and your goals are probably very close to being met.

At this point, it is important to keep on doing what you have been doing. Maintaining your workouts on a regular basis will keep you healthy, happy and strong.

Article Source: http://www.lifeweightloss.com

If fitness and nutrition are top concerns of yours, or if they should be, don't miss a single article from Julia Hall. Ms. Hall has over 15 years of experience in the fitness world as a personal trainer, motivator, and certified nutritionist. She's been published in leading health magazines and regularly posts articles from the fitness frontlines in Taos, New Mexico where she lives with her partner and two wonderful dogs.

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